Trying to Plane Shift Iomedae is kind of a bizarre thing to do, all things considered. It's will-defended, and she's a paladin. 

Having ten people try to Plane Shift her at once is not a bizarre thing to do. It indicates Tar-Baphon cared more about seeing her destroyed than she'd expected, but -

She rolls to her feet on a strange plane.

It would've been bizarre for them to have planned this as far as that and not to have been very sure the plane was, you know, either a very specialized containment demiplane or Abaddon, but this doesn't look especially like either of those.  

It doesn't look like it's specialized in either containment or in eating everyone who enters! The obvious comparisons would be to paintings of Axis, with fantastically tall buildings and strange machinery everywhere, except that the gutters in Axis are less clogged with blood.

Speaking of which: A lot of very high-level people are fighting. Really quite a lot. There are small metal projectiles (like slingstones but made of iron?) going everywhere faster than a normal eye can see, and there's some kind of horrid acidic stuff eating a hole in the ground over there and releasing toxic fumes, and some big constructs are advancing down the street over there shooting projectiles everywhere that explode when they hit, though a fellow in blue-and-white-and-red full plate with a pair of flaming knives coming out of the gauntlets is disassembling one of them. The street is black asphalt and there's stone walkways on the sides and tall buildings on the sides of there and smoking craters have been blasted into them and there's people behind cover shooting at other people behind cover with all sorts of deadly weapons. There's a big monster made of spiky black basalt with huge claws and fangs (Evil) that is trying to fight someone in Very Fancy blue and white full plate (or a golem?) with daggers in her gauntlets and pauldrons that have energy attacks built into them not far away, and it's not going well for the monster, and then a long ways down at a crossroads a Colossal plant monster is shooting clawed branches at soldiers armed with flame-spewing siphons, and this really does not look like the sort of place most people want to be in. Some sorcerer (or something?) with glowing energy powers is swooping down to blow up a bunch of constructs, and someone else with a blue and white badge but in green armor appears to be making a building's foundations dissolve into acid so that it falls on enemy troops inside it, and in the sky above winged bat-monsters are swarming a screaming flying woman in black and silver whose screams are Really Bad for the bat-monsters -

She is in the middle of the street, in a crossroads. The sky is grey with weird mist. It is Really Very Exceedingly Loud.

(Ilderia is not, actually, surprised when a woman in medieval armor appears out of nowhere in the street, but saying 'Not friendly' isn't her job, that's Century's job, her job is to kill Devastator - sweep under his arm here, strike upwards with a left-handed punch here, the armor-blades are made as an anti-brick weapon, and he stumbles back and she lunges right-handed into his chest nd he might be alive but he's not getting up soon -)

"Forward!" (Lightning crackles and sweeps three of the Tyrant's snipers aside.) "They cannot stand against us!"

(They cannot stand against her. They cannot stand against Zero, or Firesteel, or Starwalker. They can stand against her men.)

This isn't how she figured Abaddon looked but she doesn't actually know enough to dispute it, and Plane Shift doesn't let you target a location within a plane very precisely. (It's definitely not a customized demiplane meant to kill her, that would've just succeeded.)

Priorities are staying alive and - not permitting a scry, probably, both sides could be looking for her but Arazni has her hair -

- she gets hit by an exploding projectile, which hits hard, like a Meteor Swarm, though she's still on her feet - 

- and if she cannot stay alive then priority is not leaving a body, for which some options look convenient. But for now she's going to try to run away.

It takes her only seconds to get off the street and into one of the houses that does not obviously have anyone in it; unfortunately, that's because it non-obviously has someone in it. Someone (who is not in full plate armor, but baggy grey-and-green clothes with any metal in his armor covered by cloth) who is covering the door and looks completely exhausted will point a stick* at her center of mass as she comes through in an attempt to make a lot of small iron balls hit her in the torso and so kill her.

(There's a little blue and silver shield on his left breast, a silver slash of forking lightning on a sunny blue day.) 

She's faster. She's Hasted, not completely exhausted, and generally faster than people even when neither of those things are true. She'll shove his wand arm so the spell expends uselessly against the wall behind her and then tackle him. Trying not to hurt him. He looks - human? Probably she's not in Abaddon. 

"I have no allegiances in this fight but intend to defend myself," she says in Taldane as she does this. Hopefully they have Tongues up; Aroden grants it, to paladins when other gods don't at all and to his priests at third circle when other gods offer it at fourth, but she didn't prepare it today. ...in an emergency, she's occasionally asked Aroden for spells she didn't prepare and He's offered them, and this is arguably such an emergency, but -

- no, no buts, this is totally such an emergency. He can refuse her if it's not worth the cost. Tongues, please. 

She's a lot stronger than he is, and he's slammed into the floor hard enough that he has trouble concentrating, but he doesn't need to concentrate for his reflexes to try to throw her off him while yelling something incomprehensible that becomes "Get her off me!" halfway through and someone else in the building (there appear to be multiple people in this building, and probably in most buildings near the fighting) will try to shoot her, at an angle that won't hit his pal if something happens.

Glances off her.

"I have no allegiances in this fight but intend to defend myself," she says again, this time in the unfamiliar tongue the man is speaking, and she heals herself and throws her Seeking dagger at whoever's trying to shoot her and smites him as she does that, half in curiosity about whether he's evil. (She could tell by looking, but there's a lot going on right now.)

The Seeking dagger drops the person she throws it at, but he's apparently still breathing, so probably not Evil?

"Hold fire!" someone snaps, but there's still a lot of wands pointed at her. "What are you doing here?"

(Update on the house: It's the bottom floor of somewhere with a lot of floors. There's sandbags piled in front of the windows and most of the doors, though she seems to have burst through without any trouble. The soldiers are mostly dressed like the one she tackled, they're almost all men, but the one who just asked her a question is - uncannily handsome, wearing a blue and silver breastplate, and with a sword as well as a gun.)

"Says she's neutral," says a different Century on the knights' shared radio.

Devastator's down. So's this robot. So's that robot. So's that one. (Ilderia is very unfair to robots, and to anything else that needs a charged battery to fight.)

"Want me to see if I can de-neutral her?" The Pretender's voice is playful.

 - probably if they all fire those wands many of them will hit, even though she's got good protections up right now. She wants to make the sword Defending but it'll glow and make it look like she's starting something after they ordered a 'hold fire'.

She raises her free hand, cautiously. "Hostile Plane Shift. I don't know where I am. I don't know what you're fighting over. I'll heal civilians, if you have any of those, and I'll heal the man I injured." - leader Evil?

If he is, he's not strong enough to trigger a reading.

"We're fighting to overthrow the Tyrant." Someone else is trying to do something about the man with a hole right above the top of his flak jacket, to stop the blood from flowing. "Civilians are back of the line, and we'll take healing."

"Her explanation is 'hostile plane shift.'"

"You know, I think I like her."

"You like everyone."

(The building - not the one Iomedae is in - crashes with an earshattering wreck that spills oil over the battlefield, and he turns his attention to Greenrose.)

"Just the people who deserve it."

They're fighting Tar-Baphon? Why would he have sent her to another battlefield on which he was also -

"Aroden, restore these people to their strength - say more about this Tyrant?" she says, and does a channel to heal everybody. They could of course be lying, but she's not that bad at noticing that, none of the other men looked surprised at the claim, it's not a very implausible claim in the first place, and Aroden did give her Tongues which He's less likely to have done if negotiating here was a bad idea. 

And even if they're not fighting Tar-Baphon and this is a doomed rebellion against a normal empire, well, it never hurts to make friends.

"The Titanium Tyrant conquered Saint-Andrews twenty years ago, renamed it Novapest, and handed it to his flunkies to run," says Century flatly. "They're a gang of thugs who kill, steal, or do whatever else they want. Ilderia's going to stop him, and we're helping."

"You goddamn said it," growls one of the soldiers.

("You really want to talk to her.")

"Acerbus, keep them going."

And she'll head over.

It's a pretty good pitch, if you knew Iomedae and how to effectively pitch her, which they in fact might. 

'Titanium Tyrant' isn't a title she's ever heard of. 

"May I activate a wand of Sending to contact my commander," she says. 

“If it doesn’t injure anyone here.”

Have they not heard of wands of Sending.  She switches back to Taldane. 

"Location unknown, war zone, urgent gold, locals identified Saint Andrews Novapest, fighting Titanium Tyrant, orders?"

She does not get an answer. 

Sending fails cross-plane sometimes, she'll try one more time. 

Nope.

Well, that's ....quite bad news actually. 

She puts the wand back in her haversack. "The civilians are where?"

"Behind the lines," says the blue-and-white armored woman who is now walking through the door, the daggers in her gauntlets now retracted but her voice made to echo by her face-concealing helmet. "Head down that street seven blocks and you'll start finding people taking shelter - you'll forgive me if I don't say where the hospitals are, all the ones the Tyrant knew about he shelled."

She extends a hand. "Countess Ilderia. The Pretender."

(There's an aura of - relaxation, almost, fading tension, that appears when Ilderia walks into the room. She's tense, humming like a wire, and everyone else sees her, calm but energetic, in control, and they all relax because their commander is here and they have faith in her.

It's an effect that may be familiar to Iomedae.)

Uh huh. Is she evil. And is she lying about whether the Tyrant 'shells' the 'hospitals', that's a claim in some ways more important than any about who started the war or who is the nicest person. She extends her own hand. 

"Iomedae. Knight-Commander of the Knights of Ozem. Are you willing to repeat that under truth magic?"

She is not evil!

(... right now. Barely. Give it another week of retaliatory war crimes...)

"Pleased to meet you, Iomedae."

Pause.

"Always."

Iomedae is well aware that when she asks Aroden for special favors they are paid for in catastrophes in some distant place that He could have prevented, if He hadn't chosen to let Iomedae break the rules instead. 

Also she needs to know. 

Zone of Truth?

"The Tyrant destroyed the places where the sick and injured were gathered, on purpose?"

"The Titanium Tyrant targeted and is targeting anywhere and everywhere my soldiers were or are, healthy, injured or sick, using mundane weapons and artillery and superpowers, to wipe out the ability to resist of me and mine and in retaliation for my attempts to assassinate him. This included using explosive weapons on hospitals that contained noncombatants."

Well, that's different. Not good, but different. "Why'd you try to assassinate him."

"For the same reason that nine out of ten people living in Novapest would if they had a chance: Because he is a tyrant, openly and honestly. Because he has farmed out Novapest into a dozen petty tyrannies, and placed unqualified and brutal men with full license to rob and pillage in authority; because his daughter can walk into a street and kill the first man she sees and get nothing but a lecture, and because I was sick of his tyranny. Because one-thirteenth of Novapest is a walled cage where one man in three is tortured until Livia can turn him into her eternal slave. Because one-thirteenth of Novapest is ruled by a traitor who murdered her only benefactor, and another by Fear with a human face, and another by a blackmailer who loots where he likes and tears down what better men built. Because there are better ways a kingdom can be, and because no one else was going to do it."

And that's not all of the things that are important to keep track of, but - it's quite a few of them, and Iomedae does know that they have an audience, and that there is a battle on, and she does not want to test the audience's patience. 

"All right," she says. "I want to help. What do you need?"

"I need to kill the Tyrant and everyone who works for him. What powers do you have, and do they include anything that can deal with someone who can control momentum and wears armor that absorbs energy or someone immune to powers with impenetrable armor who can control the sun?"

Iomedae attempts to translate this into words that make sense. Someone who has energy resistance and also cannot be damaged by weapons as they arrest their movement - there are lots of ways to solve that, but they're not ones she possesses specifically - 

- someone immune to ...magic? with impenetrable armor who can control the sun -

"I'm a paladin," she says. "I'm good at killing evil things. And at negotiating peace, where it can be negotiated. It's fine if my enemies are immune to - powers - but if they are immune to powers and to weapons both then I wouldn't expect I can do much of anything to them. ...is killing someone who can control the sun safe? The sun is very big, and many worlds circle it, not just this one."

"Poor wording; he controls light, not solar fusion, but enough to use all the light that reaches Earth from the sun as a weapon. The Tyrant has a great many knights - those two are just the scariest." She says this with a what-an-interesting-challenge grin. "I don't think negotiating peace will work for either of us - I'm here for his head and he's here for mine, and there won't be peace as long as both of us are alive."

"Paladins are Lawful. We keep terms if we offer them, it's never a bad idea to try to negotiate with us, there may or may not be anything better than trying to kill each other but if there is, we'll find it. I believe you that your Tyrant does not want to retire quietly and I do not have enough context to enable it anyway but if you find yourself at a point where it'd be possible to talk if only either side could trust the other, that's what the gods pick us for. 

Smiting people might get past invincible armor or not, it depends how it works."

She nods. "It does not move or change when struck; instead of moving or changing, it expends energy from a reserve to counteract the force that seeks to move it. Exhausting the reserve is almost impossible, and he has other defensive abilities, just ones easier to overcome."

"I don't think people believe in paladins, here. Something I'd like to change."

"The gods only pick priests? I can see how that might happen if no one was prepared to pay the setup costs. No good guess whether smite bypasses that. It's more likely to than most things."

"Most people I know don't believe in gods. Or find them worth worshipping, if they do." 

"- I think this world works very differently than you're used to."

"Noted. Where do you want me right now."

"- Learning how the world works. Century, give the five-minute speech, he'll tell you when you need it."

And a fresh, firm smile "- Thank you."

(And then she really needs to run off.)

It's a good answer. Iomedae likes her. She turns around to whoever she's supposed to be getting the five-minute speech from.

Century is the guy who was doing most talking!

He's also going to split into two identical people, one of which will collect the squad he was with and head off and the other of whom is going to pull a lightning-bolt badge out of his pocket and hand it to her. "Which of these things are new - guns, Ilderia's armor, me doing this?"

She's boggling at that more than at anything else that's happened. "The effect of the things you shot at me is not new, the mechanism might be. Ilderia's armor is nicer than I've seen before." She takes the badge. "Uniforms are not new, I don't know these colors or this symbol. Bilocation is not new. But only archmages can do it and you're not otherwise acting like an archmage so maybe you're something different."

(Century is a distributed intelligence. He's not much smarter than the human average, but there's more of him, and figuring out that Iomedae thinks she's from a fantasy story took less than thirty seconds after seeing her, even before she said 'archmage'. This may explain some of his actions.)

"The guns are powered by chemical explosions, used to propel fast-moving projectiles that can kill anyone not superhumanly tough or very well armored. The colors and symbol are Ilderia's," he says. That's the simple part.

"- I think that things are very different here. 'Archmage' is not a natural category. Most people with powers have one ability; I can have a hundred bodies, Ilderia controls electricity, the Tyrant is unnaturally clever, a dozen people make armor like Ilderia's. The guns are just normal machines, every soldier without better has one."

" - yep, that's not how things work where I'm from." She's unperturbed by this; Creation is supposed to be very big and very strange. "I can do more than one thing. Paladins smite and heal and spellcast and empower our weapons and inspire bravery in our allies. Archmages can bilocate because archmages can do anything. The guns work at what range? They would kill a civilian in one hit?"

"Two hundred to a thousand yards if the shooter can aim well enough - I'm two yards tall." There are people on Novapest who say meters, because it is modern and scientific, but they don't work for Ilderia. "Heavy-duty ones kill weak supers. There's also stun weapons that knock out anyone who isn't unnaturally resilient and fire and laser weapons that are deadlier against anyone without shielding, but they're expensive. How do your smiting and healing and spellcasting work and can you use guns without training?" He wears a sword because Ilderia wears a sword and it is very occasionally useful for hand-to-hand combat when he has no ammunition and someone jumps him; he mostly fights with a gun.

(He is fighting, looking for a fight, or catching his breath after a fight in eighty different places on Novapest. It's what he's for.)

"I will be worse with a gun than a veteran trained in it but much better with a gun than a civilian. Smiting people makes me better at killing them and them worse at killing me, limited uses per day, only works on evildoers. Paladins can see who is evil. I can heal with a touch or pack people into a ten pace radius and heal them all at once. It'll heal civilians of anything short of death to perfect health, and do less than that for 'supers'. I ask my god for spells in the morning. I'm using one right now for translation and used another to check if Ilderia was lying. I can also dispel magic at will with my sword."

"Hey." Quick gesture to one of the soldiers who has two, heavy rifle and submachine gun.

"Sir." And the soldier will pass her the submachine gun and a belt with a holster, and Century will show her the extremely quick this-is-the-safety-this-is-the-trigger-this-is-how-you-reload. He'll also get a spare pair of sunglasses from another soldier.

"Not accurate, fires a lot, won't shoot through tinker armor - armor like Countess Ilderia's, not like mine." His is steel and Kevlar and he dies a lot. "Most of the enemy troops are Livia's Legion, they're perfect fighters, they don't miss shots, or the Tyrant's robots - walking metal soldiers remotely controlled - which are bulletproof against regular bullets and use stunners and energy weapons. There's a hundred supers on the other side, lots of different powers, a complete list would take too long, the very scary ones are the Gorgon Queen, mind controls anyone whose eyes she meets," (she may notice that everyone is wearing some eye coverage), "not resistable, Bloody Lizzy, red and purple tinker armor and controls momentum, and Count Solaris, copies and is immune to any power used on him and chiefly uses this to fly, make invincible armor and control light. How's magic defined?" 

"Does the mind control work through Protection from Evil?" That one Iomedae does have prepared without having to beg Aroden for special favors. "Divine magic comes from the gods, arcane magic comes from manipulating it yourself, both of them show up to detect magic and fail to function in an antimagic field, I don't know if wizards use some kind of theoretical definition outside that."

"We don't have Protection from Evil, we don't have magic from gods, we don't have detect magic, we don't have antimagic fields, though there are machines that nullify a large subset of powers. If you can shut down innate powers you can use that and a gun to kill almost anyone; if you can use it to shut down effects of powers it might work on anything from tinker robots to Solaris's armor, so long as Solaris himself isn't a target of it. I expect you'll need to try to know."

"At home it would shut down spells and spell effects but it wouldn't affect the abilities of magical beasts or sorcerers, and would suppress magic items only temporarily - yes, sorry, never mind, I'll just need to try. What happens to people here when they die?"

"We don't know." (Ilderia believes in God and hates His guts. Century feels that under his feudal oath he has inherited this grudge, but is less sure that it is with someone who exists.) "A doctor can fix a stopped heart and some powers have stretched the definition of 'not completely dead' farther than that but no one's ever resurrected anyone without a head, or has much to say about anything that happened while their brain wasn't working. Just how tough are you?" She took bullets and is completely fine, but they seem to have injured her briefly and then gone away, so she might have just self-healed...

"The large exploding projectile hurt, you could kill me with two or three of those if I didn't have time to heal. The guns didn't hurt much, I think my armor can typically handle that if it's not a very lucky shot."

He nods. "Good. Strong supers can hit harder than that, but not much else can. Other things to watch out for: All the robots are under one person's control, he can run them all at once and see anything they do. Count Fear can make anyone near him terrified, he has a dragon and a lion on his arms, Greenrose - huge plant monster - is completely unkillable, Luminosa looks made of solid light and is neutral and very powerful, and if someone with no powers starts suddenly gaining powers, stop hitting them, a wild card who's just triggered gets new powers to counter anything that hits them for five to forty seconds -" he'll count five seconds for her. 

“Oh, I’m immune to fear, and can make the people who fight at my side less vulnerable to it. Are the robots people or constructs only lent intelligence by their controller. People get powers very suddenly as a discrete event? Should I hit people on Ilderia’s side who get powers or is it not reliable enough for that to be wise?”

"Do that, then. Lent intelligence," he says. "And no, don't, fights are chaotic enough." The only known wild card still left is lurking back of the line in powered armor ready to try to tackle whichever of Lizzy or Solaris most needs it but he's obviously not going to say that. "White flag's the symbol for truce. The the Tyrant doesn't respect any rules but he might respect that one."

- she looks deathly serious, at that, and nods. "I don't know what else I need to know but I probably don't urgently need to know it. If the war won't be decided today I should probably be introduced to some people who could with training be paladins, so you don't only have me. I've had Aroden pick people in the same day I explained Him to them, but - only once, in thousands of occasions of explaining. Usually it takes more time than that."

"This week, not this day. We're out of time for training." He listens a moment "- We should get moving."

"Understood." There are still a lot of important things she doesn't understand but the Shining Crusade would hardly do any better, five minutes in, and wars where both sides are human are wildly more complicated than wars where one side is an evil lich and his undead armies.

There are three possibilities when someone appears out of nowhere: Either their movement was instantaneous, or their movements were concealed, or they did not, formerly, exist.

Ilderia is short on concealment powers. Luminosa can allow light to pass completely through her body without interacting, but this is visibly not Luminosa. Ilderia is also short on teleporters and has no matter-creators; Splicer can turn biomass into monsters, but the monsters use fang and claw, not activated abilities. No matter, energy, or information can survive passage through the Novapest Shield; the Tyrant does not give in to threats, but people might still feel compelled to make them if the Tyrant could hear them made, so even information cannot, let alone teleporters.

And there are no records within Novapest of an armored woman with a glowing sword who can teleport, run at twice normal speed, and shrug off anti-tank missiles.

So. New.

(This information takes perhaps two seconds to assemble, to the person watching her from rapidly-fading robot bodies and hovering security cameras, no more. He is not superhumanly intelligent, just normally intelligent.)

(Superhumanly intelligent is his dad.)

The Titanium Tyrant does not have the power to survey the entire battlefield at once, not in that detail. He's watching a screen in his command center, armored fingers steepled, issuing orders through his headset. Each super is a dot on the map of Novapest, each robot a speck, the seas of color shifting as the battle advances.

The Titanium Tyrant cannot personally coordinate sixty thousand robotic soldiers. He can coordinate a hundred supervillains (or, more practically, slightly over a dozen six-man teams of supervillains) for the purpose of minimizing superpowered casualties suffered and maximizing those inflicted, maneuvering his knights from location to location to deliver a crushing counter to rebel after rebel, keeping those without the stamina to fight for hours in reserve for the key battles. The morale of Ilderia's soldiers will not break until she dies; men may flee, but the panic that strikes an army cannot do so while the Thunderbolt of Novapest lives, so he's just going to have to kill every one of those sellsword whelps who stands between him and that goddamned lying traitor.

He receives the report, loads the video of Iomedae's appearance in a corner of his screen and rapidly plays it through while he continues giving instructions. It is tremendously improbable that Ilderia kept someone like that in reserve; Morgan could easily have fabricated a sword and armor, but armor that could stand up to small-arms fire, not armor that could stand up to a missile. Ilderia had attempted a rapid decapitation strike with all the forces available to her, and failed chiefly because he had successfully faked Elizabeth getting rather weak Survivor powers two years beforehand for this very purpose, and, of course, because he is the Titanium Tyrant, and she is merely the latest would-be kingslayer. It is also impossible, observing the nature of the physical injuries briefly inflicted on the new super, that she stopped it with a force-field; her armor survived the blow, and she, separately, survived the blow, which means they are super-durable either from two separate powers, or one complex power applied twice.

Either way, it means she is unlikely to be a Survivor. Not impossible, but it would require, say, that someone was shot at, manifested the ability to conjure bulletproof armor, was shot elsewhere with some sort of weapon that her armor could not stop, gained superhuman toughness, was somehow threatened by an attack neither power could stop, teleported away into the path of anti-tank weapons, then manifested self-healing powers (instead of strengthening any existing powers, hugely unlikely). Steelmind would have reported this if it had occurred in sight of his robots, and he knows that none of his supers had encountered a wild card and triggered them and continued attacking him, so the complexity penalty to this hypothesis is immense. A warper - in the middle of a life-or-death battle, literally while there are shots flying in every direction - is not to be guessed at. And granted powers does not plausibly explain the sheer variety.

So. Idealist. And knightly idealist.

(He steers Elizabeth and her retinue... she doesn't need much of a retinue, but there is a straight shot and she knows how to take it - he never needs to explain any aspect of battle to Elizabeth, her intuition is nearly as swift and vivid as his. Personnel, strategy, economics - there she lags, but not battle.)

Not implausible for a servant of Ilderia, but it means there's a possible alternative cheap way to eliminate this new unexpected threat.

He issues new orders to his son, and within two minutes of Ilderia's arrival the legitimate government of Novapest has an answer to Iomedae.

Also, at this point Ilderia's people are starting to come under attack again, as Ilderia and her core fast-moving strike team rush to the next part of the battlefield that needs them, and so the press comes closer to them.

Specifically, what Iomedae sees is a lot of constructs headed for them. They're marching straight down the main street in massed formation, the ones at the front with some kind of fancy energy shields raised that deflect bullets. ("Shit," one of the soldiers says,) all firing energy weapons that look like they could totally kill an ordinary commoner, with hulking robot monsters behind them.

This looks like the kind of problem you solve at home with Grease, and then fire once the neat formations have been interrupted by people falling over; alternatively or ideally simultaneously Dimension Door some people over to chew them up from the back. Iomedae is too situationally confused to make suggestions here, though, unless the locals do not seem to have a plan, in which case she will propose testing what Greater Dispel Magic does to remotely-controlled constructs, and then testing what Magic Circle Against Evil does to them when the controller is Evil.

Ilderia's people solve it with hand grenades. Century splits then splits again, and two of him rush to fire-torn windows, hurling grenades before being swiftly shot down. His aim is as good as you'd expect from an experienced adventurer (even if he's nowhere near as fast as Iomedae), and the explosives detonate just behind the front row, blasting the shield-generating robots with sheer concussive force to allow more mundane weapons to be used against the others, troops firing from loopholes with anti-materiel rifles (or, as people who don't buy theirs from Soviet surplus call them, "elephant guns").

(The copies disappear almost immediately after the explosions, along with the shrapnel. Century needs most of his bodies elsewhere.)

Unfortunately, there's a lot of robots, and the really big ones have their own private velocity redirection fields. "Anything you can do?" Century tosses out at her.

"Test what a Greater Dispel does, any reason not to?" She can do it from here. Greater Dispel Magic has good range. 

She's watching all this intently, but not at all nervously, just like it's a puzzle-game and she hasn't seen it played before.

"Go for it."

She'll have to get a little closer to try it but she's fast and not that alarmed by the gunfire. Greater Dispel Magic. A twenty-foot radius burst where the robots are, a few hundred feet out from where they are. Does it do anything?

It does not!

Ah well, too bad. She'll try a couple more times in case it's just that she had poor luck against a caster stronger than she is, but she isn't really expecting it to work. Different world, different rules. She doesn't otherwise have a clever solution here; paladins do crowd control by persuading wizards to their cause. 

(Where's Arazni? Discern Location and Gate have no limits on their range.)

The small robots have big numbers, the big robots may only have small numbers, but there's a lot of smaller robots near them advancing.

"THE NEWCOMER MAY DEPART UNHARMED," says a very loud booming voice from one of them.

(Arazni does not seem to be around.)

- that sounds like an effort at negotiations, sort of. Not an ideal one, but - the kind of thing people who are Lawful or pretending to be do more often than people who aren't trying. Of course even if one is widely known to make false assurances of safety one might try it on someone who just arrived, hoping they'll trust it. 

"Is the robot likely to be lying," she says.

"Might be, might not. Depends if bullets or words are cheaper." He's shooting robots.

"Do you request of me that I don't try to speak with it." The description of this place has not earned its ruler any starting goodwill and she will in fact refrain for now if her new friends request it. 

"I request that you kill it."

Is the one that's talking also shooting, or is it just talking.

Oh yeah, they're all shooting.

Then she will crawl up near a window and shout back "I'll speak with a construct that cannot shoot at things!" and then she'll move in case they target off her voice and then she'll ask Century for one of these 'guns'.

Here, take it. (By this point the people in the room are starting to go down, between holes blasted in walls and blasts through existing holes.)

Fascinating. Yes, Julius, send an unarmed drone.

She can pick downed people back up again with another channel, if they aren't killed instantly. 

And she can try to use a gun! ...it's a weird weapon. Heavy, and poorly balanced, and reactive when it's fired, bucking wildly. She can tell it's doing things you couldn't do without a powerful spell at home. She wishes she could spend ten minutes experimenting with it. 

Some of the downed people are dead, because the weapons on the robots, especially the bigger robots, look made for killing heavy-duty adventurers, not just barely-not-commoners. Some of them are just unconscious - as she can tell when one of the beams eventually proves undodgable, the ones they're firing in specifically her direction aren't lethal, they just make her feel a little tired and numb, and also the lethal ones can miss important organs.

The gun is very effective, in spite of how she has practically no idea how to use it beyond 'point and shoot'.

Then the gun will rapidly win her over, because she cares more about that than most other things. Die, robots. 

" - they're not trying to kill me," she reports with surprise once they hit her. She is not natively inclined to take this as a good sign; Tar-Baphon wanting people intact is worse for them than him not caring.

"Huh."

"THIS DRONE IS UNARMED," says a small flying construct well over the fray.

Century is obviously going to shoot it because it is probably going to drop bombs on them.

Steelmind has more!

"Don't shoot at it! I know it's a construct but it's in a sense claiming to be an envoy!"

"Steelmind's not stopping."

His robot army is indeed still advancing!

"NEUTRALS MAY DEPART UNHARMED OR NEGOTIATE WITH THE TYRANT." He does not literally have a foghorn but his drone can be very loud. "TRAITORS TO NOVAPEST WILL BE EXECUTED."

"I noticed the army's not stopping. That is an argument for negotiating. Don't. Shoot. The unarmed talking ones. I will help you shoot the ones that are shooting at us." Channel, to pick everyone up who has been downed since the last channel. She's running low on them.

"Acknowledged. Why do you think they're unarmed?" He'll switch targets, though, since that's Ilderia's preference.

"...that's what it yelled very loudly?" 

"- The Tyrant lies. Often."

"I expect you are telling the truth about that but - if someone comes up to you saying 'I'm an unarmed envoy' you can't shoot them on the grounds that they could be lying about being unarmed! ... in Golarion you can't do that. The Lawful gods would smite you. And they'd also smite the other guy if he had his soldiers posing as envoys. I guess without the gods I can see how the whole thing breaks down, but you've got Aroden now, so try it His way."

"Ilderia says go with your plan."

"COME OUT SO YOU CAN TALK. WE WILL NOT SHOOT YOU."

"Send the unarmed construct in!"

"THE MIDDLE OF A FIREFIGHT IS A VERY BAD PLACE FOR DIPLOMACY."

"I CANNOT OFFER YOU A CEASEFIRE BUT I PREDICT I COULD GET ONE IF YOUR ROBOTS STOP MARCHING AT US."

"WE ARE NOT OFFERING ANY TRAITORS A CEASEFIRE. WE ARE OFFERING YOU A CHANCE TO LEAVE."

"SORRY, WHY WOULD I CARE ABOUT THAT?"

"I like her, Julius! Finish the conversation, then withdraw the drone, then kill her."

"THIS IS A VERY STUPID FIGHT TO DIE IN."

"IF YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT PEACE, I WANT TO TALK. IF YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT WHY YOU ARE NOT EVIL, I WANT TO TALK. IF YOU ARE EVIL AND DO NOT WANT PEACE THEN WE WILL HAVE TO SEE WHO DIES IN THE STUPID FIGHT."

"BOTH SIDES IN THIS CONFLICT ARE EVIL. NEITHER WANTS PEACE. THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT MY FATHER IS HONORABLE AND ILDERIA IS A TRAITOR."

This is a fascinating conversation she would really really prefer not to be having while explosions are flying everywhere and people are dying because she's conserving her remaining lay on hands. 

Ilderia's probably not evil. You can beat Detect Evil, obviously, but you'd have to know you need to, and they didn't know. Or claimed they didn't know. She arrived unexpectedly and some people on that battlefield were Evil and Ilderia wasn't and that is - significantly informative.

Aroden probably wouldn't've handed her the truth spell if it were defeasible - reasoning like that makes it more expensive for Him to give it to her but she thinks that's actually worth it under the circumstances. 

Iomedae isn't good at diplomacy even in her own world. In a new one - it's probably hopeless. But she's not in fact going to be the one to stop talking. 

"THAT IS AN IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE IF TRUE. I HAVE STRONG REASON TO THINK ILDERIA ISN'T EVIL BUT NO INFORMATION ABOUT WHETHER SHE IS HONORABLE." It is slightly discouraging that Iomedae had to explain not shooting down the envoy drones but probably there are lots of things like that, nonobvious if you haven't encountered them and there are no paladins.

"IF YOU LEAVE, WE CAN TALK. WE WILL NOT LET ILDERIA USE NEGOTIATION AS A SHIELD, OR TO ASSIST HER IN WAR. WE WILL NEGOTIATE WITH YOU. WE WILL NOT NEGOTIATE WITH HER."

Robot army continues to advance! The really big robots continue to deflect bullets and explosions!

"IS THERE A THIRD PARTY WE CAN APPOINT TO ARBITRATE WHETHER ILDERIA IS DERIVING ASSISTANCE IN WAR FROM THE NEGOTIATIONS

I WILL PAY FOR IT


I AM NOT CLEAR ON WHAT YOU ARE WILLING TO NEGOTIATE WITH ME ABOUT. IT SOUNDS LIKE IT IS NOT 'AN END TO THE WAR'. IF IT IS 'HELP WITH ANOTHER EVEN MORE IMPORTANT WAR WE WILL BOTH AGREE IS NECESSARY' THAT IS THE RIGHT KIND OF THING."

"IF WE STOP ATTACKING, SHE BENEFITS FROM THAT. THERE IS NO THIRD PARTY ACCESSIBLE TO NEGOTIATE. THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF OTHER BETTER THINGS FOR A GOOD PERSON TO DO AND YOU SHOULD GO AWAY AND DO THEM. ILDERIA IS JUST TRYING TO CONQUER A COUNTRY THAT ISN'T HERS."

"IF YOU ARE LYING ABOUT THAT OR JUST WRONG ABOUT IT IT IS NOT NECESSARILY AS IF I CAN COME BACK AND HELP THE REBELLION LATER.

IF ILDERIA WAS AN HONORABLE PERSON OF MY WORLD SHE COULD PROMISE NOT TO BENEFIT FROM THE CEASEFIRE BUT I EXPECT THAT IS NOT AN OPTION HERE. I AM BARELY QUALIFIED TO DO IT MYSELF AND WOULD NOT DARE WITHOUT MY ADVISORS." And no one but Iomedae and some high-ranking Abadarans could do it at all.

He would like to snap that Ilderia is an honorable person but in fact nobody would do that, nobody could do that, and nobody else would do it back if they did.

"IT IS NOT AN OPTION. IF YOU DO NOT WITHDRAW I WILL END THIS ATTEMPT TO START NEGOTIATIONS." And then he will blow her up.

"UNDERSTOOD. I APPRECIATE THE ATTEMPT."

And she turns back to Century. "I can't fix your robot problem. Paladins are good against single tough targets, and better today than tomorrow when they've had time to prepare. Where should I be."

The single tough targets aren't here. "Are you tough enough to get in there and kill them close-up?"

Steelmind will withdraw the unarmed drone. And then -

"- Start with the simple solution."

Fire a mid-sized missile into the bottom floor of the building Iomedae and Century are in. Just a mid-sized one, there's still enough shields left that it won't take out too many robots or adjacent buildings or anything.

....if she hadn't in fact been prepared-with-spells for the fight she was having before she was having this fight, if that didn't include Moment of Greatness and Arazni's Heroism and a Ring of Evasion, or if she wasn't herself and able to make fate work for her, that would have been probably deadly. 

(Note to self, urgently figure out how to access those spells or equivalents yourself.)

As it is she raises her shield in the right direction in a single instant and -

- is completely uninjured. If the building's collapsing on her, that might hurt. 

The building is absolutely collapsing on her. Everyone else inside is very dead. Also, she's probably going to get shot a lot if she lives.

Yes, yes, everyone around her dying of something from which she steps aside unscathed happens to Iomedae a lot. Usually it's Wail of the Banshee. Time to get out of here, however much bludgeoning her way through the rubble this requires. The sword can take it. She should not swap out the ring of evasion for the one of invisibility, the ring of evasion just saved her life and will probably have to do it again in not much time. Giving up the ring of protection's also risky, though, especially if there are things on this battlefield that can trivially see through invisibility - she isn't Mind Blanked - that would've been a good question to ask -

- she makes the sword Defending, and puts on the ring of invisibility, and starts lifting very heavy things to get herself out.

She is really extraordinarily strong and her sword is approximately indestructible, though, so she can accomplish this! It'll take her a bit, though.

Yep. She can think while she digs, though.

Ilderia didn't know what a paladin was, but the enemy really seemed to. That's - the way you approach negotiating with a paladin, and not the way you approach most other things. That's interesting. She doesn't think Ilderia was lying about it; forget that she'd have had to beat the truth spell, it's not a productive lie. "Yes, I know what a paladin is, and I want you on our side" is a useful thing to say, if it's true. 

Was Ilderia trying to get her killed? It's an obvious explanation, in the sense that most people would've died of that attack and that attack was presumably predictable to Ilderia. It doesn't quite fit, though. They spent a while answering her questions. They didn't object to her talking to their enemy. (She gets the sense that Century did object, but Ilderia was overriding him.) It fit with people who - expect to lose, but think they nonetheless have to fight, which makes sense given how their enemy's stated policy is "I don't want peace, I want to kill them all". 

Probably ten minutes before she arrived this revolt was unwinnable. The question is whether it still is. 

...no. The question is whether it's worth winning at the expense to Aroden which winning it would entail for Him. She's here, it's in His hands, the question is at what price what good would be bought, and whether it's worth paying. She cuts and lifts and shoves and prays, trying to make her paths plain and clear in her mind so she can be easily steered down one - should I try to win this war? Should I try to escape it?

(Given genuine uncertainty about whether she should try to escape, why didn't she seriously consider accepting the offered escape? Well, because she still considers it quite likely she can, and wants to, help Ilderia win, or that Arazni will show up and want to, and she couldn't accept escape that's premised on her neutrality, and there clearly wasn't quite enough shared Law - or ability to make sure that the things said were the things heard - to lay out the problem and arrive at something she and the New Tyrant both preferred to 'he tries to kill her right now', which has in any event had the satisfactory result that she's not dead and he cannot feel that her continued aliveness is the product of his mercy.)

Aroden doesn't know what she should do, or doesn't think it's worth telling her. So once she's cut her way out of here she'll run. In a direction without lots of people, if there are any of those on offer.

It's a city. In every direction, it is a city. If she looks far enough, she sees the Novapest Shield, not non-city stuff.

The line of battle seems to have moved past her while she dug herself out, and so there's lots of directions she can go that are not obviously towards the shooting and where any civilians are probably hiding in bomb shelters?

No, she doesn't want to go anywhere near civilians, it has been established already that the Tyrant will whatever-that-was them to get to her. She also doesn't really want to wander right back onto the battlefield without a plan, she's getting low on healing. She would like to find a place to rest, but that enormous force bubble is not encouraging. 

Fine. Battlefield. She'll keep the invisibility up and look for another copy of the man who makes copies of himself. 

This area of the battlefield looks pretty robot-dominated! There's people with the robots, but they're wearing the Tyrant's badge, a snake (gold) around a crown (gold) on a purple field, or else a red gauntlet on black that manages to make the Tyrant's badge look slightly less obviously evil. There's some more walking-tank types, but they're currently blasting away at possibly-uninhabited buildings -

- Oh, hey, there's Century, firing from cover near a very visible duel between two Extremely Powerful people. They're both really implausible strong and tough, charging each other, punching and grappling and throwing with inhuman strength. One is wearing red and black and has the gauntlet-symbol on his chest, and the other wears Ilderia's colors. Most of the robots and soldiers near them are letting the two of them fight - they're mostly gauntlet-symbol's people, and he's winning; blue-and-silver dude is tough, but not on the same scale as gauntlet-symbol.

(A broken sword that is plausibly too heavy for Iomedae to lift is near where they were fighting.)

None of them is paying much attention to an invisible patch that is Iomedae.

Then she'll get quite close. Evil? Apparent capabilities other than 'legendary warrior'?

The legendary warrior is Evil. He is, in fact, Evil with a sheer density that she has probably never seen before, depending on just how old the biggest dragon she's ever seen before is, overwhelmingly Evil in a way that practically nobody she's ever seen before is, and she's going to lose a few seconds to blinking the afterimage of just how much Evil is contained within that little space out of her eyes.

Once the sparks leave her vision, she can see that he's an old man in spite of his toughness, and wearing armor with a helm that covers his face, but the armor has been largely wrecked during the battle - he's tougher than it is - and so it's hanging off his body, showing someone intensely muscular, clean-shaven, what remaining hair he has shaved almost to his head, of vaguely Chelish-ish ethnicity. The stone streets are creaking under his weight, and he is in the process of breaking the arm of the younger and slightly less legendary warrior with professional skill.

Thhhaaat's the 'literally Tar-Baphon' or 'demon lord' tier of Evil. Iomedae can't win a fight with that.

Iomedae can't usually win a fight with that because she doesn't usually have a gun.

The thing to do about demon lords or Tar-Baphon is smite and fire at range, if you can. Not one third-circle paladin, that'd be ridiculous, but a dozen of them, Mind Blanked and mounted and greater invisible and properly enspelled? Arazni'd have nothing to do. Even arrows, let alone guns, exceed the range of a demon lord's most deadly powers and their supernatural senses.  And smiting ignores the resistances and protections of an enemy, and makes them easy to hit besides. Tar-Baphon goes around with Winds of Vengeance up, so arrows are useless, and usually you can't see him to aim anyway, but a gun would do fine.

...if they're dueling, though, in the honorable sense where they're harming no one else and no one else is intervening - is that what it looks like -

Provided the collateral damage from throwing each other and dodging in a manner destructive to the environment counts as 'harming no one else'? The gauntlet people and robots aren't messing with their champion winning the fight, and there aren't a lot of Ilderia's people to interfere, and the extremely Evil warrior looks pretty well proof against everything the world can throw at him, based on just how Winning he is.

At home she'd do it without hesitation, but at home she knew what people understand Law to be, and here she doesn't, and this is a candidate for the sort of thing you might understand Law to be -

- think about it like a god does, Iomedae, even though that's dipping into a well that she can feel is not all that deep and is starting to run dry. 

What is Law. Shortest answer, the principles that let people do better than shatter their cities where they disagree, that lets them live side by side and build things together. Of course they have such principles here, even if they betray them and believe their enemies to betray them; you wouldn't need the gods, to have the impulse towards honor, towards honesty. There is a fantastic Lawful definition of why soldiers should not break and run in battle but the Law is written on the human heart in simpler terms: I'm no coward. There is a possible conceptual framework for an institution where instead of destroying their cities in an Abyssal rage of horrors, the leaders stand man to man and see who's stronger, but it'd take - a lot of surrounding conditions, to have that institution, and she's abruptly sure they don't have it here in its stronger form, though they may have it here in the written-on-human-hearts form, the voice that screams 'he's mine, leave him to me' -

- given the lack of such an institution in a crisp and formal form, Iomedae observes that trying to capture in one's actions all the ways honor is written on the human heart is 1) a losing strategy and 2) an unArodenite strategy; Aroden is predictable not because He's doing your thing but because He's doing His thing and keeps telling you precisely what that is. She is someone who can stand in weapon's reach and watch a man she wants to win a fight instead lose and die because she thinks that principle requires this, but principle has to actually require this, instead of just gesturing vaguely in that direction. If she followed her impulses that far they'd tell her to march right into Hell and challenge Asmodeus to a duel, and the fact of the matter is that it is immoral to walk into Hell and challenge Asmodeus to a duel.

It doesn't take long, to think like a god. By the time she's reached cover she's settled it. 

Boots of Speed. Divine Favor. Smite. Fire. She obviously cannot kill a demon lord like this but she can probably make his opponent's life abruptly a lot easier. 

Three shots to center of mass before he can blink, and then the gun clicks empty.

- Let us spend a moment discussing weapons technology, which has advanced somewhat since Iomedae's time. A longbow, drawn back by a strong man, delivers perhaps a hundred and thirty joules of energy, if the arrow strikes swiftly. Armor that can usually stop arrows dates back six hundred years; if Count Heavyhand was hit by an arrow, he would plausibly not notice.

A rifle is more powerful; standard U.S. Army service rifles deliver one thousand seven hundred joules per bullet. Heavyhand occasionally notices them specifically because bullets tear his shirt.

But Iomedae is not carrying a standard service rifle, she is carrying an anti-material rifle, which can deliver thirteen thousand joules of energy with each .50 bullet.

Heavyhand would still not notice. He got his powers from a direct hit with Chinese field artillery. He sneers at a mere thirteen thousand joules of energy; it might crack his armor (he doesn't wear powered armor - it's really just to protect him against gas attacks, one of his known weaknesses), it might make him lose his footing, if he was currently light, but it is unlikely to leave a bruise on his indestructible hide. Heavyhand is tough.

Now is, perhaps, the time to mention that Iomedae has superhuman aim and that the blessed weapons of a paladin pierce through all superhuman resistance to harm, from a werewolf's vulnerability only to silver -

- to a golem's adamantine skin.

The first bullet goes through his heart.

This would still not be enough to kill him and then he is shot twice more in short succession.

(He fell as falls a battle-tower

On smashed and struggling spears

Cast down from some unconquered town

That, rushing earthward, carries down

Loads of live men of all renown—

Archers and engineers.)

(The Tyrant is no longer interested in negotiation.)

... There's a lot of robots and troops very near Iomedae and she is no longer invisible and they are not happy.

She was really, really not expecting that. You need ten third circle paladins, to kill a demon lord, or three and a very very lucky shot - this is going to be discarded as not worth thinking about right now as she has more urgent problems. Luckily she also has the Boots of Speed. She would like to 1) be invisible again and 2) be clear of the position she just gave up and 3) - be in the air, ideally, now that they know she can be invisible she's not going to escape on the ground - she didn't prepare Angelic Aspect, she usually doesn't, she only has two third circle spells -

- she can feel, now, that she's scraping the well dry, that she's bent the laws of what she can be given as far as they can be bent, that the Iomedae who asks Aroden to sneak her an Angelic Aspect she didn't prepare, and then flings herself Hasted and invisible into the sky, is not allowed to do any more bending fate in her favor for a while. 

But on the bright side if she ever gets home with the stick she's now carrying, the Shining Crusade is over.

Steelmind is generally not considered one of the absolute strongest supers in Novapest. B-ranked, sure, but that's all. There is no number of robots he could throw at Solaris that would beat him, or probably at Lizzy that would beat her, and he didn't make the robots, anyway - that's Steelstorm, on whose work he is completely dependent. Ilderia can just turn off anything with a battery that gets anywhere near her. And he's nowhere near as smart as his father.

Also, he is the exact person for this specific situation. Iomedae will get shot at while she activates all her magic items, and then she's invisible - 

(the robots can see into the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums, she's still invisible there - the robots don't have any other senses, Minerva's invisibility is what they were designed to counter and she relies on infrared vision to see while invisible)

(a different thing that is now part of Steelmind's mind checks all the computerized RADAR stations for their signals - the robots don't have any way to feed that direct to their systems, but there's systems already in place for painting a dot in their vision and telling them to fire at it, and he can activate that remotely - the dot will stutter from place to place instead of being updated organically, he's devoting his full attention to this but there's still limits - there will be lag, just a little, that makes it much harder to hit her - 

- but the crossfire will still be centered where she was a few moments ago, and the MK. III "Juggernaut"s have very big blasters, designed to shear straight through concrete and steel to get to whatever their target is.

There are very few people who have gotten away with killing one of his father's friends. This idealist isn't going to be one of them.)

Ah hells they do have someone with See Invisibility, evidently calling out orders to everyone else. Some of that hit her - not most of it, but some of it - and hurt quite a lot and Angelic Aspect doesn't actually let you fly very fast or with particularly spectacular maneuverability, even with the Boots of Speed helping. Also Angelic Aspect gives you resistance to cold and acid and she obviously wants fire, here. 

She loves her gun very much but the sword is probably going to serve her better, here, with its spell resistance; she drops the gun for lack of a holster for it and draws the sword again. And then she'll attempt evasive aerial maneuvers, mostly getting as low to the ground as possible.

If the guy whose life she just saved (and kill she just stole) is around, and not the kind of person who'll be sulking for a week that a woman shamed him so, she could really use some backup, over here.

Sunder is not the kind of person who'd be sulking for a week that a woman shamed him so, he works for Ilderia. However, his arm, his sword, and a large fraction of his ribs are broken. He'll attempt to (one-armedly) smash his way through the robots, but while he's doing it in Iomedae's general direction (or, more accurately, in the direction of the rear line and possible medical treatment and a replacement sword), he's not doing it tremendously effectively.

Dodge, zigzag, try to position herself relative to the armies such that the fire that fails to hit her hits its own allies, look for a place to hide when the boots of speed run out. Iomedae misses Arazni. Or not even Arazni, any fifth circle wizard at all would do. If her new life plan is to take out demon lords from 'gun' range - and this seems like a good life plan for as long as there are demon lords fighting - she could really use a Teleport out.

She probably doesn't have enough healing left to do much for Sunder; two Lay on Hands won't even really patch her back up all that well and she's weaker than he is. She could throw him the holy avenger, it'll change size for him, but he's not a paladin so it won't do that much for him and she needs the spell resistance right now.

She's pretty sure the robots have burned off her Protection from Energy by now and she can't get that back either. Dodge more. ...this is one of those situations where one ends up (likely) dead quickly and (possibly) fourth circle, isn't it. They do not run the Shining Crusade that way because they'd run out of men.

She will probably still be alive when she makes it out, assuming she doesn't take too many unlucky hits! Did I mention there were a lot of robots?

She runs through the last of her healing and a Hero’s Defiance and the boots are all out by the time she’s reasonably confident they’ve lost her in the damaged buildings.

All right. Next order of business find a place to hide that isn’t likely to be exploded out from under her. Also another gun, she would prefer to always carry one of those from now on.

It's not actually that hard; the line of battle is advancing slowly, and the buildings behind the line have Ilderia's troops in them, and the buildings behind them are empty. And she is pretty fast.

Great. Then she’s going to hide. Possibly this just means someone will do a Discern Location and if so she probably just dies but anything short of that is will defended and she is a notoriously willful person. Perhaps she will survive until morning.

She doesn’t mind the horrendous injuries much, but she dislikes the odds of survival and she’d like to ask some questions of Ilderia that might be a bit awkward, like “did you consider it extremely likely that I’d die inside five minutes, or were the capabilities your enemy displayed there surprising.”

Then she can find a building with nobody visibly in it! It looks kind of fancy; glass windows (shattered by explosions), richly carpeted floor (covered with dust and bits of ceiling), stairs, and lots of floors. There might be a basement, if she searches; there's definitely rooms she can hide in where nobody will notice her unless they cheat.

Basement's probably a good idea in case of fighting not specifically targeting her. 

This place was so wealthy before the war. It aches a little, to walk through the wreckage. 

There's people already hiding in the basement! They may have had that idea, too!

They flinch where a very heavily armored burned bleeding woman with a sword comes down the stairs.

She startles immediately when she sees them and raises the sword.

- civilians, Iomedae. Some people are civilians. Most people are civilians.

She doesn't have that much Tongues remaining but she's not in fact out yet. "I apologize," she says. "I'm not here to hurt you, just looking for a place to rest. Should I go somewhere else?" Which will be a bit of a nightmare, trying to hide again knowing these people may have sold the information that she was here, but - she remembers the building collapse. She can't, won't, stay here if they want her to go.

"- As you wish, ma'am," says someone who is clearly afraid of her. He's wearing slightly more formal clothes than everyone else here; most of the civilian men are wearing short-sleeved, low-cut shirts and pants, and the women similarly except occasionally with very short skirts. Not surprising - she may have been too busy to notice, but it's hot.

(There's a pretty astonishing mix of ethnicities present, ranging from Garundi to Avistani to Tian, as well as some kind of implausible hair colors. No people who aren't humans visible yet, though.)

Sword away, and she'll take a step back. "Well, I don't want to go back up," she says with a grimace, "because it's ugly out there, but I can't promise danger won't follow me and I don't even have a good guess whether you're safer with me here or without me here. I arrived here an hour ago. You know more than me about what will keep you safe."

"Nobody here will hurt you." Knights are very dangerous, whichever side she's with.

"You couldn't," she says, a bit tiredly. "What I don't know is whether people might have a superpowered way to track me down, in which case I should leave here. If there's no such thing, then you're safer if I'm here because I can stop anything else that shows up," and battlefields are always horror shows that attract monsters as well.

"But if there is such a superpower, for tracking people, I should go, and I don't know because I'm new here."

And if they lie to her about whether there's such a power so that she'll go away because they want her to go away, well, it's not great for their Law but it's still a way to learn their preference. Iomedae disprefers arranging circumstances where someone has an incentive to lie to her but not doing that is probably too tall an order for tonight.

"I don't know, ma'am." There's lots and lots of superpowers and nobody can know all of them.

"Understood."

If he can track her, she probably dies tonight, and should just try to be clear of anyone else when she does so, and if she stays here these people will die as well. If he can't track her -

- they're not acting like it'd be an enormous relief to have an adventurer around to deal with the inevitable scavengers that ought to plague a battlefield-of-a-city like this one. She thinks if you limped in this state into a basement in a besieged city in Ustalav - not as a paladin, obviously being a paladin changes things and to these people she is not a paladin - she thinks they'd still be, on the whole, relieved, once they determined you weren't inclined to hurt them.

"How long have you been hiding here?"

"Since the war started?"

(no, they're very clearly still afraid of her.)

"- and how long is that?"

"A week and a bit?"

"In that case I think you are safer without me here, as nothing's eaten you yet and the chance my enemies can track me doesn't seem lower than one in eight. I'll go. ...Do you have food? Water?"

"- We have food and water." It's a law in the district that all apartment managers need to have enough sacks of rice and beans for everyone for a month in case of natural disaster and the plumbing still works.

- that is a deeply and importantly surprising fact about this place, actually, in some ways more surprising than anything else she's seen or done. 

"Good," she says, after a few seconds. "...enough you'd sell some?" Because she does not in fact have any food or very much water herself.

Sell?????? This isn't Ilderia's district.

Maybe she thinks it is?

"Of course."

Iomedae reaches into the haversack tucked inside her armor and pulls out - more silver than the food could be worth even in crisis, but hopefully not enough they'll be willing to murder each other over it. "Only what you can comfortably spare, please."

They can comfortably spare rice and beans and a full water bottle (a marvel of engineering, made of some unknown material) for shocking small quantities of silver!

(actual, like, silver coins! wow!)

Iomedae has not guessed the silver is remarkable because she approximately hasn't heard of other ways of doing currency. The Church of Abadar will give you promissory notes saying your silver is in one of its vaults, which you can use to get silver out of a different one of its vaults.

"Thank you," she says. "Good luck. I do not know if anyone will come here asking after me but if they do you should of course tell them whatever you wish." And she'll grimace and limp back up the stairs. She's bleeding but she's careful not to leave any blood behind; your enemies can use that for things.

They will be glad that she is going.

Iomedae is tired and in pain and she wants to hide until morning and she's worried every building is going to have civilians in the basement but - 

- war makes people Evil in a lot of ways, but one of the more important ones is making everything very unclear. Maybe she could safely stay with them until dawn. Maybe she'd even be doing them a favor, doing so. Maybe she, if she lives, will end up saving them, and if she dies they'll perhaps be worse off.

And that's no excuse at all, of course, to remain in a place she is only permitted because they know she could kill them and don't know she wouldn't. And if they haven't died yet, they are unambiguously safer without her there; it's not hard math. But people know right and wrong in their hearts and the confusion of war makes it harder to see it. Or easier to look away from it. 

War does have as one redeeming quality that it kills you, if you lie to yourself too much. This is genuinely a thing Iomedae likes about war. 

Does the next building have people in the basement? She'll wander around all night, if necessary, though she's hoping it's not necessary.

The next one does but the one after that doesn't.

This is not the kind of thing the gods arrange but Iomedae sends them a prayer of thanks anyway. 

She keeps the ring of invisibility on and clears a stretch of floor and closes her eyes and tries to put herself in Aroden's hands, more than usual. Should she fight in this war? Can she win it for Ilderia? Should she win it for Ilderia? Is there a way of escaping? Is there a way to take these guns back home? 

...she meant to think about it for much longer but this was, in fact, a very rough couple of hours, and she hasn't been this badly injured without access to healing for a very long time.

(And while Iomedae finds somewhere to rest, it is also the case that Steelmind's army is rushing Heavyhand's body to a tinker cryochamber; they don't have anyone in the city who can do resurrections at all reliably, but such people do exist if the brain remains intact.)

Iomedae will wake up without being stabbed even a little bit. She can hear distant thunder.

Most importantly she does not appear to be in Heaven so they don't have Discern Location. 

She sits up. Usually when she wakes she uses a Lay On Hands to suppress the aches and pains and exhaustion from sleeping in a suit of armor, but she's out. ...she can fix that, though. She pulls out her holy symbol and clears a little space on the ground and kneels, still invisible, and reaches to Aroden.

When Iomedae was very young she travelled to the paladin order nearest her, and demonstrated that she had been chosen by Aroden, and was welcomed, and taught the standard prayer-forms, which she kept for ...one year, before she realized with horror one morning that she could not in fact say them; that she was not sure she wanted to be steered however Aroden saw, that she was not convinced that they would win that way. And that she was, in fact, loyal to a project she'd defined for herself and then read into Aroden's holy books, and that if her read of the books was wrong it was her project, and not the books, she was loyal to.

She'd really expected Aroden to renounce her, when she had this realization. It would not have been unreasonable. The gods are entitled to hire only people who wish to serve them, and not people who wish to serve something else. She spent a couple of days explaining to Him that He probably should; she was horrified by the idea of using His gift not in His service. Eventually she'd admitted to herself that He was a god and probably knew what He was about, and that she should probably just go and check, whether her project was His, whether the story she'd told herself was a true one, whether Aroden was in fact the god she'd in boundless optimism imagined.

When she came back to the formal prayer-forms most of a decade later she believed them again, but had learned some other things along the way and made some adjustments for accuracy. 

My lord, my god, my guide and my sponsor, make me the instrument of Your will in this world. May I see the world clearly enough to do your work in it, and may all I do rebound to your greater purposes. May I be eager for your guidance, but rarely in need of it. May I live and die in Your service, and do honor to your name, and obey you in everything. Where I am in need of it, I entreat that you correct my errors, arrange my triumphs, and direct me to the most urgent of Your work in the world. I pledge to you today that I will use Your powers by my vows and in Your service, and obey you in all things, and be Your sword and Your word in this world. 

And her spells come to her, in that rush that feels more like drinking when desperately thirsty than it feels like most things. She'd left herself open to learn what they should be, today - that's usually a good idea in a strange situation, though it's costlier for Aroden to do it that way - but in the end He gives her mostly what she's accustomed to, some Divine Favor and Hero's Defiance and Lesser Restoration and Resist Energy at second and two Tongues at third circle. And her healing is back, which means she can expend a Lay on Hands right away to stop being quite so battered and to address the exhaustion from her habit of sleeping in armor. 

And then she'll go up to the surface, still invisible, and see what's going on.

There's no thunder, just very large irregular explosions going off a long way away. The battle lines have shifted somewhat relative to where they were, moving inwards to reduce the fraction of the city controlled by Ilderia, but otherwise there's no major change.

Right. Then she’ll head towards danger, still invisible, looking for Evil and also a gun.

She doesn't have to go very far to find danger, since "moving inwards" and her comparatively short journey past the battle line mean that the firefight is practically on top of her. Finding evil, or guns that are not currently in use, may be trickier, since detect evil doesn't have that long a range and the typical gun is being fired.

Right. What does the situation appear to be, is there a copy of Century, are they fighting hordes of constructs or something more dynamic than that -

As was previously the case, the force that mostly looks like humans is retreating and the force that mostly looks like constructs is advancing. Century is not immediately visible; there's an aerial battle between two flying people shooting colorful energy beams at each other, who are doing enough aerial acrobatics that it's hard to tell which of the masked woman in an elaborate armored dress with a pair of submachine guns that shoot glowing green beams or the man with flaming hair and a flaming body and shields of flames is on which side. Most of the retreating troops have badges checkerboarded blue and red, sometimes also with Ilderia's badge (or an improvised version thereof, just a white stripe on blue) and sometimes not; any other supers are behind cover and hard to see. The retreating troops are planting traps as they go, which explode unless disarmed; some constructs are heading into captured buildings, but the advancing construct army continues to have a very large advantage that only the defenders' advantages of cover and prelaid traps can compete with.

'huge numbers of robots' continues to not be a problem Iomedae is at all equipped to solve. She isn't tough enough to stand up all day swordfighting them, and wouldn't get longer than it took to identify her anyway.

....satisfy a curiosity, then. What are the constructs doing in the buildings they're retaking.

Looking for soldiers of the other side hiding in them, so they can kill them.

- and the civilians in the basement?

Only if there's soldiers still in uniform hiding among them.

It's not that Iomedae actually expects better from anyone who doesn't work for her (either better than 'hiding among the civilians' or better than 'killing the civilians if there are soldiers hiding among them'). 

Is she missing something. Is there some way she can in fact fight 'absurd numbers of constructs'. ...kill whoever controls them. Important medium-term priority, no immediate implications. Break the connection with whoever controls them - Magic Circle Against Evil might in fact work for that but she'd need someone who can survive more direct fire than her, maybe the man she saw last night who was fighting the demon lord -

...ask Aroden for arcane spells? She's never tried that, she doesn't actually know that it wouldn't work, and he can always just refuse her if it's too expensive. She requests a Lightning Bolt. Nothing happens, which is almost certainly because Aroden is not allowed or not able to just give her arcane spells.

Right. Back away from the battlefield, then. There is not much point in putting herself in danger to solve problems she's not uniquely or even especially equipped to solve.

That person looks Evil! She also looks like she's on Ilderia's side and dashing from cover towards the army of constructs. Old-looking woman, still in decent shape, wearing a pale blue-grey armored costume.

Iomedae'd have to touch her to try 'give her a Magic Circle Against Evil' and that looks like it'll be ...hard to do. Maybe worth it, if she seems to have the reflexes Iomedae doesn't to fight the constructs indefinitely. 

(It's not a great sign that she's Evil. It's not shocking. Plenty of Taldane generals are.)

People scatter as she approaches. This is because everything near her is starting to freeze over. Water vapor in the air condenses, forming fractal patterns of ice on the ground; the asphalt beneath her feet cracks as it tries to shrink away from itself, buildings accumulate thin coatings of ice.

If Iomedae tries to touch her, this is going to be uncomfortable.

Iomedae will make herself subject to Resist Energy (Cold)! But she's not going to startle the sorcerer with abilities she hardly understands; she'll stay nearby and see if it makes any sense to try (it doesn't if the constructs are fleeing anyway) and see if 'being slightly less confused' is attainable here.

(In the condensing vapor it's probably possible to pick out there's an invisible person crouched nearby.)

At which point, two separate chains of events occur.

First, the icy woman does not notice Iomedae. She's the chief target of the Tyrant's forces. They fire bullets at her; if they hit, they deflect off and she staggers and keeps moving. The constructs attempt to use beam weapons on her; these are largely ignored. Maybe someone would find something that works - she's not moving like she has all the time in the world - but it's not a long walk, and as she closes into melee, her suit gushes out icy foam and all the constructs near her - stop working, watch their arm joints freeze over, shatter into thousands of pieces.

(All the constructs, anywhere near her. There's reasons her people took cover.)

And the other thing that happens is that both sides, knowing there's an invisible person and not knowing this person is on their side, will try to shoot Iomedae!

Yeah, that figures!

(They mostly miss. She's invisible, and she's stayed under cover as much as she can, and she has more and more expensive magic items than a third-circle paladin ordinarily would, and as soon as trouble starts she can make the sword Defending at which point it blocks bullets for her with blinding speed, and also she can activate the boots and get elsewhere. But when they don't miss, they hurt. The armor's helping much less than it should.) 

...yeah she is not in fact durable enough for it to be a remotely good idea to be on the front of this battlefield, not because there's nothing she can do - she suspects at this point that there's a lot -but because there are too many things happening for her to identify the ones she can help with with any success. At the end of the day if she doesn't die she'll have a perfect understanding of everything and also she'll be dead before then. 

Lay On Hands. Hero's Defiance. Lay On Hands. Ice lady had better not need any help because Iomedae is going to be somewhere else.

Ice lady is running for cover as fast as she can, and looks like she'll make it.

Iomedae can be somewhere else! She's not that slow and in house-to-house fighting, battle lines are.

She wants to get up in the air and get a view of the whole fight. She wants to go walk to the wall of force and figure out if it's meant to keep people in or worse horrors out. She wants Aroden to give her some guidance here, but He's not doing that. She can't usefully participate in engagements until she happens to spot an instance of Century.

...maybe she can obtain a gun and practice the reloading-a-gun action, that seems like a skill she might shortly wish she had mastered.

Does she prefer "steal a gun," "ask someone for a gun," "take a gun from a dead body," "look more for Century," "ask someone on Ilderia's side for help finding Century," or some sixth possibility as a tool for achieving this end?

She would like to get her gun from a dead body! Paladins do not have a taboo on scavenging things from dead bodies, because they are an institution of Golarion, where doing this is more or less the secondary strategic priority of every single engagement.

Zero did indeed produce a lot of dead bodies, and all the shooting is producing more! She can get a gun off a dead body without much trouble, though it specifically being an anti-materiel rifle is trickier and digging through pockets for ammo might be slightly non-ideal for her invisibility, bandoliers are not presently all that popular.

She wants one of the good guns she killed a demon lord with. She'll put her Ring of Protection on instead of evasion, heal fully, and then take her chances on being spotted getting ammunition for it.

Not that hard! Unfortunately, she will be spotted (by Ilderia's people, since this specific weapon is one they're using) and this will involve a couple of rounds headed her way.

At this time Iomedae is invisible and has a Defending holy avenger and the best Ring of Protection money can buy and an Amulet of Natural Armor only a little weaker than that and if they're mere humans they're going to find shooting at her very disappointing. She'll still try to go away promptly, though.

Then they will be tragically disappointed. Alas.

Great. Time to hide and practice swiftly reloading the coolest weapon Iomedae has ever wielded. 

(She'll keep an eye out for changes on the front and an eye out for Centuries.)

Hide: Success!

Reloading practice: Success!

And a Century can eventually be spotted! (Running from one building to another.)

Right. Iomedae is not very fast but she'll attempt to chase him down.

Not impossible. He notices an invisible thing when she gets close and points his gun at it.

Invisibility's a finicky illusion; she kicks the ground, and that breaks it. Hopefully no one here has any way of determining it's the ring in particular. "Century."

"Iomedae." Nobody is going to shoot her immediately, but there's still fighting going on.

She wants to swap for Evasion but she doesn't want to reveal that much about what abilities she has and when. "Who controls the constructs."

Century looks older than he did yesterday, and more tired. "Steelmind. He's the Tyrant's son. Hides in a bunker somewhere we can't track down and does everything remotely."

Sensible. Solvable with enough simultaneous Nightmares, which she doesn't have, and not especially with anything she does have. 

"What's the story with the wall of force?"

It takes him a moment to realize what she means. "The Novapest Shield. To keep us in and everyone who might invade while the Tyrant's busy out. Disintegrates anything it touches, stops anything it can't, absorbs energy to keep itself going. Can't take it down if we can't take the palace, and if we can do that we've already won."

- tells you some things about the Tyrant, not ones inconsistent with what she’d previously believed. Her overall picture of the man is that he's definitely Evil, plausibly Lawful (certainly so where it doesn't cost him things he wants very badly; the hard question about people like that is whether they stick with it when it does), and that he's fairly sure of his victory, though not so sure of it he can afford to keep his most valuable people off the battlefield. A force wall to prevent his enemies from fleeing is consistent with all of that.

She nods. “It remains the case that I am good at single Evil targets, not useful against the constructs, and not durable enough it’s wise for me to hang around the battle lines. Do you have in mind a place I should be?”

Pause to listen to Ilderia. "How fast can you move? Do you know how to ride a motorcycle or drive a hovercar?"

"Faster than an ordinary run only in short bursts using limited resources. I don't recognize either of those words. I can ride a horse, including if it's flying."

"Horses are obsolete. Can you stay on a rapidly-moving metal wheeled-or-flying thing-like-a-skeleton-horse someone else is driving?"

"I would expect so, if it's the kind of thing trained people without powers can learn to do at all."

"Ilderia will send a rider to pick you up so you can start hunting their supers. 'Till then - pick your shots." And he'll turn back to the fight.

She'll step away from him, shoot at constructs, switch Invisibility for Evasion when no one seems to be looking. 

What she wants is to talk to Ilderia, but she's aware that this request is a major imposition in the middle of an ongoing fight which Ilderia's side does not appear to be winning.

No, they do not. The impression she's getting is - where one side has a lot of strong adventurers, they can run rampant unless they're countered by adventurers on the other side; otherwise, the constructs can easily defeat Ilderia's soldiers, who try to hold out with the advantage of the defensive. Buildings are getting blown up, often, when Ilderia's troops need to evacuate them, though that doesn't seem to reach the basements.

- A shiny metal motorcycle will phase incorporeally through a wall, with a woman wearing grey armor with Ilderia's arms on it and a very fancy spear in a holster by one side. She looks at Iomedae and nods.

Aroden teaches that progress and invention are fundamentally meritorious activities and that there is nothing more human than the strange and the new. She will get on the incredibly suspicious horse.

"Hold tight," the driver says curtly.

Then she takes off. The horse is a construct and goes at up to about a fifth of a mile each moment, depending on how open the streets are. Its driver does not appear to believe in things like "speed limits" or "unwise acceleration." She has somewhere to Be and intends to Be there, really, really fast.

This is in fact faster than Arazni's Phantom Steeds but not by so much she has no basis for comparison. She will hold tight. She's ludicrously strong.

If she holds too tight that might cause problems due to putting too much pressure on Morgan's armor, but she knows how to hold tight to people who aren't completely indestructible, right?

Yep, comes up frequently enough. Most people are squishier than Iomedae.

It's not a very long ride, though it is an exceedingly fast one. The very fast not horse pulls up next to a small hovering horseless carriage; the windows are very small made of something that looks like glass and the outside is armored. Ilderia, a Century acting as driver, and a super Iomedae doesn't recognize are inside it.

Ilderia looks older than she did yesterday.

Iomedae looks the same as she did yesterday, but it's not her men dying out there. She - nods, through the glass.

"Good work," she says, clearly including both Iomedae and Morgan in that. And then just to Iomedae - "Century says you killed Count Heavyhand with a rifle?"

(The other knight is male, young, wearing armor that looks more like Ilderia's than Iomedae's, and will open the door for Iomedae.)

Morgan is pleased (though her facial expression doesn't change) and she'll cock her head and zoom off.

“It certainly looked like it. I would have expected from how Evil he was that you’d need three third circle paladins but it might be that guns are just much better than anything my world has.”

"He was the third toughest they have. Normal bullets bounce off his skin." She manages a grin, though it's still under her helmet so the effect may not be immediately apparent. "Come in, we're going hunting."

They have THREE demon lords???

She gets in. “Will conversation be too distracting.”

"No."

"I was the target of a very impressive explosion very shortly after we first spoke. Did you...anticipate that."

"Not that fast. I'd told Century that you should shift positions once the conversation was over." And the Tyrant fired the moment his interpretation of the truce expired, instead of waiting.

It is not an impossible kind of communication failure. She tries to calculate whether the Tyrant in fact left her enough time to flee, if she’d known she should be. ….with Haste up, yes, she could’ve gotten out.

“Warned, I can usually survive that kind of thing. Not warned - I got lucky.”

"My failure, then. I apologize." She would rather apologize to the dead people, but they're dead.

"The Tyrant rarely spends missiles that size, they're expensive. He thought you were a threat."

"Seems correct. I don't like him much, from what I've seen. Though the buildings are lovely and food seems shockingly inexpensive."

"Novapest's not rich." She pauses. "Technology in your world is - swords, bows, steel armor, horses?"

"Yes. - Azlant had wonders but Azlant was destroyed."

"Earth hasn't been yet. - How did you kill Heavyhand?"

"Aroden grants me the power to smite Evil people, after which my blows will surpass all their resistance to injury, and to give my weapon the guidance of a spirit of Heaven, to make my aim better. It is a very powerful ability even at home and guns seem to improve it further. I exhaust His gifts if I use them too much, but I can smite four people a day, and might be able to do more in an emergency, I've never tried."

"Good."

Ilderia has not explicitly said "our plan is that we wait for a miracle to save us because there is no hope left other than truly extraordinary luck" but that was in fact their plan, starting yesterday evening.

"Does this let you ignore metal armor, power-created armor, walls, fast healing or hitting nonlethal areas?"

Iomedae is accustomed to operating in a context where 'go as far as your strength can take you and hope you've closed enough of the gap a miracle can close the rest' is a completely valid plan! She got the sense it was the one at work here and that doesn't really bother her!

"It improves my aim such that I can usually land a hit despite armor, but won't make a bullet go through armor if bullets simply can't go through that armor even with a perfect shot. It bypasses some of the kinds of regeneration I'm familiar with but not all of them; I may be able to flexibly bypass some other kinds if advised of them. I can kill someone by shooting their foot or wings. I can only smite targets I can see, but if a bullet can travel through a wall successfully then I would be able to smite someone when I saw them and then later kill them through a wall."

"Anti-materiel rifles can shoot through walls. Can you smite someone whose skin is completely concealed by armor? If a device in the armor makes bullets bounce off, can you still hit?"

"I can smite someone concealed by armor. I'm not sure about a device in the armor that makes bullets bounce off. If a sufficiently lucky hit might do it, I can ask Aroden for luck; if it simply can't be done at all then - does a sword also bounce off?"

"No." (Ilderia carries a sword.) "It's a product of superpowered engineering. Projectiles moving faster than - about three times the speed of Morgan's bike - are deflected away from the wielder. Luck and skill are both powerless against it."

"I don't think smiting someone would get around that. ...Greater Dispel Magic conceivably might."

"Range?"

"Sixty paces or so."

"What's a pace in your height?" She needs to check.

"About half my height."

She nods as though that was what she was expecting. (She doesn't have a yardstick in the hovercar.) "Limits?"

"To Greater Dispel Magic, as cast from the sword? It's a six pace radius, and it won't work reliably on spells cast by a much more powerful spellcaster than me."

"How many times each day? Can you cast it while aiming the gun?"

"No limits to that except that it takes a moment to do each time. Activating a magic item takes all of your attention but I could probably fire right after."

"Right. We're going to try to kill the Tyrant's knights. If we see anyone in armor we'll fly close enough so you can try to dispel the armor. When you do, shoot whoever it is and see what happens. Is there a problem with this plan?" If she can dispel the energy shield and the pemmer box in Lizzy's armor, Ilderia can just kill her.

"I would expect that to work, assuming they're all Evil. - they aren't necessarily even if the cause they serve is."

She nods. "Then that's the plan. Don't spend a smite if you can't tell, then - we have a lot of people to kill today."

"I have to get very close to tell, six paces."

"-" she nods. Lizzy is evil. Solaris is in a just sorting but not a kind one. "And your invisibility?" The fact that her new ally isn't inhumanly fast is a serious weakness.

"It's an item, and trades off against some other ones, and is fragile and breaks when I fire the gun, or get into a swordfight. Or kick the floor excessively hard."

"Any way of going very fast?"

"...falling from very high up. Otherwise, no, I can only go a couple times faster than an ordinary human."

If Ilderia had eight hours and wasn't at war with her quickest supplier or two days and the shield was down she could get Iomedae a fitted suit of powered armor with a jetpack. Unfortunately - "Your invisibility only works for one person?"

"Yes, though it doesn't have to be me. - it's very expensive and Crusade property not mine, if you want it you'll have to promise me you'll give it back."

Meanwhile...

Ilderia does not have a general staff, because there is exactly one army in Novapest that professional and it's Mussolini's government-in-exile over in the seventh district. But she does have a collection of specialized military advisors who are not just "her knights," people with good heads for logistics and for strategy, recruited from - trusted friends, security personnel, retired officers who were willing to sign up to fight for a good cause or who were just vulnerable to Ilderia's special brand of charisma.

Century's on it, not because he has army training (though he can shoot inhumanly straight) or superpowers or is really tremendously talented at it, but just because it is really useful to have someone who can give minute-by-minute accurate reports on every part of the organization in every key location.

He's adding details to the Iomedae file as he gets them, right now, and it's on reading four times a day that Gabriel blinks, blinks again, claps a hand to his head and groans like he heard a really bad joke.

"- She's a paladin from Dungeons and Dragons. Not an Idealist of a hero from generic fantasy fiction. From the literal Dungeons and Dragons rulebook, third edition, between fifteenth and nineteenth level, and I bet we can find her spells by checking the book."

"And she has, what, a ring of invisibility?"

"Probably. Let me call my GM and he can fetch us a Player's Handbook."

" - Captain, tell one of your sergeants to get ten men, we need a D&D Player's Handbook, third edition, now - no I don't know where geek stores are -"

He put down the phone. "This is faster."

(It may, perhaps, help make sense of this to outside observers if they are aware there is already an eighth level elf sorcereress in Indianapolis.)

Ilderia has a radio in her powered armor that speaks directly into her ear!

"- Thank you for the offer, and I understand." Ilderia has broken one promise since age six. "I can't think of anything that needs it."

"- Are your spells divided into discrete tiers, with different spells in each tier that you select from each morning depending on what your god gives you?"

"- yes? That's how all spells granted by gods work, where I'm from."

"You're the first person I've met with spells granted by gods. You have four levels of spells?"

"No, three." She has decided not to indicate the fact she'll get stronger over time until or unless it becomes urgently relevant. It's more reason for the Tyrant to kill her.

So she's lying (unlikely if she's a paladin and Ilderia is pretty good at detecting lies) or more likely -

"Oh, shit, she had house rules."

(Ilderia doesn't have the player's handbook memorized, she stopped playing games when she was eight. Gabriel is totally going to the bottom of the table after he gets his medal.)

"- We'll resume this conversation after this fight," she says, though there's nothing to immediately suggest an upcoming battle. "Current plan is that you use your dispels on anyone on powered armor, do not use your smite unless Century or I calls a target we know to be evil, and see if the dispel works. Any problems?"

"None. We'll resume what conversation? About the spells?"

"Yes."

And the door has a loophole she can fire through and the hovercar turns a corner an army of the Tyrant's robots are advancing, with a couple of people in powered armor leading the way. Century will accelerate, spinning the vehicle to get Iomedae close enough and give Iomedae her shots and then get out of there - the other knight will broadcast shields of force to protect the hovercar, and then start firing bolts from them at the attackers - and a dot of electricity will form and tear through the robots' batteries, flashing from one to the next so fast it looks like a single blade of lightning slashing them down one-by-one.

Not actually the most chaotic battlefield she's been on. Does a Greater Dispel Magic from her holy avenger do anything about the powered armor.

It does not.

That's the only thing Iomedae has been instructed to try except when ordered to smite and she is not at all temperamentally inclined to disobey orders showing off even though she immediately thinks of some touch-attack based spells she could ask Aroden for which might work.

They are going to be out of there in seconds. The hovercar moves fast.

"Nothing?"

"Don't think so. Thought of some other things I can try for any person it's particularly important to get but they won't be things I can do all day and they go best with a smite."

"Oh?"

And then, "Try again here," and they're going to engage a different group of enemies using the same tactics, just to check that it's not just one make of powered armor that it doesn't shut down.

Greater Dispel Magic.

Still nope.

And as they come out, "Explain."

"As an expensive favor from Aroden if I need to hit impossibly armored people I can try asking for Holy Javelin. It does vanishingly little damage, barely worth thinking about on its own, but with a smite it'll bite, and it'd go right through armor. It's not worth it if there are tough powerful people in there, but if the powered armor is compensating for the fact the people in it are only moderately powerful, it could probably take one down."

She nods. "Powered armor usually is." Her own Arondight sure is. "Is it a physical object? Can it be deflected?"

"No, it's holy energy, but it can be deflected," by which she means that Rings of Protection help but she doesn't have all the relevant vocabulary, "but I'm not very liable to miss even if someone has good deflection, unless it's perfect."

Which means 'who knows.' "How expensive?"

- "Next time, shoot any supervillains you see who aren't in powered armor. Don't smite them unless I order it. If you see Solaris - gold armor, dark skin, flying, we'll be taking fire - see if you can dispel his armor if he gets close enough, since the power's in your sword, not in you; either way shoot him."

"Orders acknowledged. Yesterday I asked Aroden for special favors more than I ever have before - half a dozen times, I think - and he granted them all but it felt intuitively like I'd pushed about as far as I can. And His aid to me trades off against Him doing other important things potentially including picking more paladins here."

Ilderia does, occasionally, face moral dilemmas. She usually resolves them by taking an implausible amount of risk for herself (and all the wonderful people who are crazy enough to follow her into it) so nobody else has to, but this is not a dilemma that she can, actually, solve that way. She either needs to lie to an ally, actively, or she needs to potentially risk the sanity of one of her new valuable loyalists by making her doubt her own existence.

Ilderia is not, actually, a saint, and there are no lines that she simply will not cross, but lying to her own people is repugnant to her, and so -

"Acknowledged, I have different calculations, we need to talk when not in combat." Which they are about to be!

That is a perfectly reasonable approach to having different calculations for a reason that's hard to explain! Iomedae will continue to go off her own assumptions until someone convinces her of new ones.

One more skirmish of the same sort as before -

Iomedae shoots people. She is shockingly good at it for someone who first encountered guns as a concept the day before.

- And then they try to break the hovercar off because they've pushed as far as they can -

And an inch farther.

All light in the city vanishes, every particle (or wave) in and out of the visible spectrum drawn towards the miniature sun in Solaris's gold-armored hand, for a tiny fraction of a second before a searing beam of golden light from his hand flickers out towards the hovercar with enough power to melt any structure on the island.

(He hovers in midair, regally, not bothering to conceal himself, a tiny dot from which the beam emerges, a tiny dot to everyone in the battlefield without superhuman vision; his muscles are invisible beneath the golden plate armor and his sharp, strong cheekbones are highlighted by the golden helmet that leaves half his dark face visible, his eyes full of regal condescension at the doomed rebels who dared to challenge the King of Novapest and His right hand, Solaris, Count of the Sixth.)

It's sort of like a Flame Strike, except perpetual and an eighty-foot-wide cone.

It will, for the first fraction of a second, miss.

Iomedae has good instincts about when hostile magic is aimed at you and is bringing her shield up to dodge it before she can see it.

Century is going to wildly turn the hovercar as fast as he can, evasive movement and get closer to the ground they can't just be stranded like ants under God's own magnifying glass but they need to get under cover there's the bridge there - 

(The knight whose name Iomedae still doesn't know yet will instinctively raise force-fields to defend them -)

And then they are going to be flamestruck, as Solaris corrects his aim.

The force-fields outside the ship can take overwhelming quantities of sustained fire from any weapon other than literally Earth's star.

(Technically, Solaris cannot siphon any light that does not enter Novapest. This means that he is not fighting at his full "A for Atomic" potential, right now, and needs to spend a moment charging, so we are merely discussing the energy of hundreds - or in the first instant, thousands - of tons of TnT in a beam, not millions.)

That will get them another second, or two.

"Solaris!" 

Absorbs powers. Instructions were to try to dispel with her sword but she's not close enough for that. Iomedae raises her shield and starts a Communal Resist Energy (Fire) but her spells take more than a second, or two.

And the hovercar melts, crashes, and has its fuel cells explode.

Century dies instantly.

The other knight can maintain shields around himself indefinitely (at this level of precision) and is left suspended in midair, leaning on his shields and with no air but what was trapped in his skintight bubble.

Ilderia's powered armor is going to hit the ground shrouded in a glowing radiant aura and giving off immense quantities of heat.

Iomedae got blasted by the flame strike but is much harder to kill than any individual Century (and Aroden didn't give her any Paladin's Sacrifice today, which is probably him saying she should not be trying to save other people at personal risk right now). She will activate her boots and run for cover. She lost the good Resist Fire and just has what's built into her armor, which is enough to walk through a fire but not enough when a powerful spellcaster's trying to kill you with fire.

Ilderia will scramble to her feet and, with a moment of absolute horror

(it hurts it hurts it always hurts)

Do the same, minus the boots - 

And Solaris will pause the beam for a moment (still gathering it in), spot his target, and, moving closer, send the beam of absolute destruction at Iomedae and Ilderia.

Who are now moving into the entrance of an underground tunnel, part of Novapest's (no longer, for military reasons, functional) subway system!

What an elaborate tunnel system. Iomedae scans for oozes and darklands creatures.

"The man with the forcefields -"

"- DROP!" Ilderia yells. As soon as Ilderia is inside she is going to whip her way around, bolt out another entrance, and start shooting at Solaris with energy weapons hidden in her gauntlets.

(She has really nice powered armor.)

"- Drop Solaris if he gets close -"

- she is going to assume previous orders to not smite him are still in place. Given that he can borrow powers that have been used on him, that seems like the correct way to err.

She does not have nearly as nice armor! With Haste she can mostly keep up, but only mostly. 

And she'll shoot at Solaris, not that she expects this to work.

The knight will attempt to do as Ilderia says and drop -

The energy blasts will not quite hit because Ilderia's aim in the dark is really not that good; the bullets, fired square-on, will be telekinetically shoved to the side so they miss by a mile, and Solaris, coming closer, will focus his deadly light, blast the space just in front of the building entrance that Ilderia and Iomedae are emerging into, and then should they (as he expects) duck back inside -

Yes -

Sure! Inside!

- Drop the building on them.

The knight will fall on Ilderia's order when she risks her own life what is she doing she's insane, hit the ground and then raise shields and start running for a different entrance -

Solaris will focus fire on him, and, both of his risky enemies out of the way, get close enough to just telekinetically break his neck inside the force-field.

Iomedae's going to dodge the worst of the collapsing building and now she's in range to try a Dispel Magic with the sword - she'd really like it to work, not that that's the sort of thing that she can cheat at -

His armor will immediately flash out of existence.

Solaris will accelerate upwards very very fast while death-raying Iomedae! He's also erupting into an aura of flaming death that burns everything anywhere near him, which will set any burnable buildings alight if nothing else has.

Owww - Hero's Defiance - more owwww -

Also she'll shoot at him, though he's faster than she is and without smiting she doesn't think she really stands a chance.

It is completely dark (except that the beam of doom is coming from where his hand was a moment ago) and her bullets are just going to miss, it is not really a question of accuracy (though hers is, of course, perfect) so much as him putting them somewhere other than where physics normally dictates.

(meanwhile, Count Solaris is fantastically confused about who created a tinker object that can dispel generalized power manifestations -)

"That should not be possible." He makes a note to ask Prudence if there's anything from her day he needs to know about.

Iomedae ducks back under cover because she cannot in fact handle the flame strike for very long or dodge it very reliably. Her armor and sword are undamaged; she is severely horrendously burned.

"Got - the - armor," she informs the general direction where she last heard Ilderia, who may need to know this to call in other experts.

Ilderia is trying to dig her way out of a collapsed subway station and is not immediately audible!